Prop-13 petition dealt double blow by court

Sharron Angle's property tax-cutting petition suffered a double blow Tuesday as the Nevada Supreme Court rejected two motions filed by attorney Joel Hansen attempting to get it back on the November ballot.

And the wording of the order makes it clear the appeal of Senior Judge Charles McGee's order has little chance for success.

After two days of hearings in Virginia City's courthouse, McGee ordered the question removed from the ballot, ruling that thousands of signatures were invalid because circulators failed to property fill out the statutory affidavit. The law requires they attest that each signature was made in their presence, that each person is believed to be a registered voter, that each was offered the chance to read the actual petition, not just the summary, and to the number of signatures on each page.

The judge ruled proponents failed to put in the number of signatures on petitions they submitted and only filled in the affidavit form on the final page of each batch of petitions. Those and other flaws, he said, left the petitions below the 58,628 signatures required to make the ballot.

Hansen asked the high court for a stay while he appeals.

The most telling portion of the order was the court's denial of the motion for a stay.

The high court pointed out that just a few weeks ago in the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority case, they removed three petitions from the ballot saying the petition circulators must substantially comply with the law.

"Substantial compliance requires initiative proponents to have at least attempted to satisfy each element in the statute," the order states. "Here, the district court found that appellant was aware of the statute's requirements but chose not to compel its circulators to comply with them."

"The signatures on pages for which the affidavit was left blank or left unsigned were not supported by any circulator's affidavit. Appellant has not demonstrated that it is likely to succeed on its argument that it substantially complied with (the statute)."

The court also rejected Hansen's argument saying the affidavit requirement is unconstitutional, saying it resolved that issue in the Las Vegas case.

The court ruled that, without a signature on each petition page, there is no way to say that the signer had the opportunity to review the petition's full text before signing. As a result, the order says petition proponents are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their appeal.

Secretary of State Ross Miller said the ruling is a strong statement because the court didn't deny a stay on procedural grounds but on the merits of the appeal itself.

Dyer said he wasn't surprised by the ruling because it matches what the court did in the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority case.

The other issue Hansen raised is that McGee's entire ruling should be thrown out because he has a conflict since his wife is a Washoe County school teacher. He said that gives the judge a conflict because passage of the petition, a Nevada version of California's Proposition 13, would reduce school funding, impacting the family's finances.

McGee and teachers' union lawyers Mike Dyer and Jim Penrose said there was no conflict since McGee's wife has been retired from teaching for five years.

The court ruled that since she is retired and now only serves as a reading consultant for the district a few hours each month, the McGees have "no more than a de minimis interest that, in no sense, could warrant disqualification."

Hansen said he isn't sure if there are further steps Angle's group We the People Nevada can take but that he'll discuss it with her.

He said proponents might want to go forward with the appeal even though it's probably not possible to get it on the ballot at this point.

County election officials have been mailing out absentee ballots to soldiers and other voters not in Nevada since the middle of last week.

Hansen said the teachers' union has been fighting their efforts since last year. He said they sued two or three times and filed a complaint with the secretary of state to slow proponents down.

But he said the killer was the May 20 deadline imposed by the Legislature on those filing petitions. That was later overturned by the Supreme Court since the constitution gives until mid June to submit them.

"We thought May 20 we had to get them in that day so we were rushing and made some mistakes," he said.

- Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.